Modifying a SATA only motherboard

[pinnerite]

I have a Gigabyte miniATX motherboard with 4 SATA HDD sockets.
I wondered if I could replace the hard drive with an M.2 SSD
provided I could find some kind of adapter.

There appear to be loads of devices advertised but I cannot be sure
that they would fulfill my need.

Has anyone tried this?

TIA

Alan

[Andy Burns]

Post by pinnerite
I have a Gigabyte miniATX motherboard with 4 SATA HDD sockets.
I wondered if I could replace the hard drive with an M.2 SSD
provided I could find some kind of adapter.

If you have a spare PCIe slot (not so likely on an ITX motherboard?) you
can adapt it to M.2 NVMe

<https://amazon.co.uk/PCIe-M2-NVMe/dp/B084GDY2PW>

If you have no slot, you're limited to M.2 SATA which is not so fast,
but will save you space if that's what you're looking to do?

<https://amazon.co.uk/SATA-M2-SATA/dp/B09VKCRD59>

[SteveW]

Post by Andy Burns

Post by pinnerite
I have a Gigabyte miniATX motherboard with 4 SATA HDD sockets.
I wondered if I could replace the hard drive with an M.2 SSD
provided I could find some kind of adapter.

If you have a spare PCIe slot (not so likely on an ITX motherboard?) you
can adapt it to M.2 NVMe
<https://amazon.co.uk/PCIe-M2-NVMe/dp/B084GDY2PW>
If you have no slot, you're limited to M.2 SATA which is not so fast,
but will save you space if that's what you're looking to do?
<https://amazon.co.uk/SATA-M2-SATA/dp/B09VKCRD59>

You also need to check what the specific motherboard and its BIOS is
capable of. Some older ones cannot boot from a drive added to a PCIe
slot - although they will be able to see it once booted from a SATA
drive, so you can place the boot manager on a SATA drive, but have the
operating system load from the M2 drive.

[Lem Novantotto]

Post by SteveW
You also need to check what the specific motherboard and its BIOS is
capable of. Some older ones cannot boot from a drive added to a PCIe
slot

Yep. Some of those old *UEFI* BIOS should be moddable - there must be some
tutorial online...

Post by SteveW
you can place the boot manager on a SATA drive, but have the
operating system load from the M2 drive.

To boot an old motherboard - based on chipset P67, and with a pcie to nvme
adapter, I use an usb dongle with the boot manager and /boot on it. Simple
and effective.

[rbowman]

Post by pinnerite
I have a Gigabyte miniATX motherboard with 4 SATA HDD sockets.
I wondered if I could replace the hard drive with an M.2 SSD provided I
could find some kind of adapter.

Probably not unless you have a PCIe slot. When I upgrade an older Dell it
only had one PCIe and that was used for wifi. I went with a SATA SSD.
Unlike HDDs a SSD can make use of the full transfer speed of SATA 3 so it
was an improvement but falls short of NMVe. For what I do the speed
difference is most noticeable on a reboot but I rarely reboot.

[Paul]

Post by pinnerite
I have a Gigabyte miniATX motherboard with 4 SATA HDD sockets.
I wondered if I could replace the hard drive with an M.2 SSD
provided I could find some kind of adapter.
There appear to be loads of devices advertised but I cannot be sure
that they would fulfill my need.
Has anyone tried this?
TIA
Alan

Presumably there is a reason for this adventure ?

Was the hard drive being naughty ?

Just a plain old SATAIII SSD 2.5" drive (like you might
use in a laptop), can run at a SATA III rate. Because you
didn't name the motherboard model number, we can't guess
what controller is in there. Nor for that matter, how
spiffy your PCIe slots are. Your motherboard could be a
9.6" x 9.6" microATX (full size ATX is 12" high).

$ inxi -F
Machine:
Type: Desktop Mobo: Micro-Star model: MPG B550 GAMING PLUS (MS-7C56) v: 1.0
v: 1.I0 date: 07/13/2024
CPU:
Info: 8-core model: AMD Ryzen 7 5700G bits: 64 type: MT MCP cache: L2: 4 MiB
Drives:
ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Samsung model: SSD 870 EVO 4TB size: 3.64 TiB <=== boot drive

When it comes to measuring them, computers are particularly clever.
For example, this machine has invariant RDTSC and yet speed measurement
of disks does not agree when performed by two different OSes.
This is captured on a Zen3 B550 system (Asmedia Southbridge).

[Picture] Comparison of benchmarks of SATA SSDs on LM213 and Windows

Loading Image...

The only thing I have against NVMe, is the installation is a
bit fiddly, the screw is a nuisance. I own just one sample NVMe
and most of the time, it sits in the little cardboard box.

It would be nice, if they used good flash in SSDs, but that's never going
to happen. SLC, MLC, (TLC,QLC,PLC) the downward descent continues.
Bog roll for the win.

You can see in the bench picture, the drive at the bottom was
bought as an "experiment in cheapness". And the error corrector
can only manage about 285 MB/sec or so. The sectors aren't being
spared out, and while re-writing them might be fun, it might not
achieve the desired result. I wanted to see if the cheap drive
behaved like my bad USB flash sticks or not.

You have to decide whether this storage device is to be bootable, or not.

Paul

[Andy Burns]

Post by Paul
The only thing I have against NVMe, is the installation is a
bit fiddly, the screw is a nuisance.

I have a USB3 enclosure for NVMe, rather handily it uses a rubber "peg"
instead of a tiny screw.

[John R Walliker]

Post by Andy Burns

Post by Paul
The only thing I have against NVMe, is the installation is a
bit fiddly, the screw is a nuisance.

I have a USB3 enclosure for NVMe, rather handily it uses a rubber "peg"
instead of a tiny screw.

Just another data point: I have an HP Microserver, Gen 8 with an
NVMe drive in an adapter. It boots from a USB stick in the
internal socket because the BIOS can't see the NVMe at boot time
but can see it once Linux is running. It is also running a Xeon
CPU which makes it considerably faster than it was when shipped.
John

[Daniel70]

Post by Andy Burns

Post by Paul
The only thing I have against NVMe, is the installation is a
bit fiddly, the screw is a nuisance.

I have a USB3 enclosure for NVMe, rather handily it uses a rubber "peg"
instead of a tiny screw.

A 'rubber peg'!! Hopefully, something you don't need to fiddle with it
too often, else I'd be worried about the 'rubber peg' wearing out.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Post by Paul

Post by pinnerite
I have a Gigabyte miniATX motherboard with 4 SATA HDD sockets.
I wondered if I could replace the hard drive with an M.2 SSD
provided I could find some kind of adapter.
There appear to be loads of devices advertised but I cannot be sure
that they would fulfill my need.
Has anyone tried this?
TIA
Alan

Presumably there is a reason for this adventure ?
Was the hard drive being naughty ?
Just a plain old SATAIII SSD 2.5" drive (like you might
use in a laptop), can run at a SATA III rate. Because you
didn't name the motherboard model number, we can't guess
what controller is in there. Nor for that matter, how
spiffy your PCIe slots are. Your motherboard could be a
9.6" x 9.6" microATX (full size ATX is 12" high).
$ inxi -F
Type: Desktop Mobo: Micro-Star model: MPG B550 GAMING PLUS (MS-7C56) v: 1.0
v: 1.I0 date: 07/13/2024
Info: 8-core model: AMD Ryzen 7 5700G bits: 64 type: MT MCP cache: L2: 4 MiB
ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Samsung model: SSD 870 EVO 4TB size: 3.64 TiB <=== boot drive
When it comes to measuring them, computers are particularly clever.
For example, this machine has invariant RDTSC and yet speed measurement
of disks does not agree when performed by two different OSes.
This is captured on a Zen3 B550 system (Asmedia Southbridge).
[Picture] Comparison of benchmarks of SATA SSDs on LM213 and Windows
https://i.postimg.cc/nrkVdbVn/munchkin-racing.gif
The only thing I have against NVMe, is the installation is a
bit fiddly, the screw is a nuisance. I own just one sample NVMe
and most of the time, it sits in the little cardboard box.
It would be nice, if they used good flash in SSDs, but that's never going
to happen. SLC, MLC, (TLC,QLC,PLC) the downward descent continues.
Bog roll for the win.
You can see in the bench picture, the drive at the bottom was
bought as an "experiment in cheapness". And the error corrector
can only manage about 285 MB/sec or so. The sectors aren't being
spared out, and while re-writing them might be fun, it might not
achieve the desired result. I wanted to see if the cheap drive
behaved like my bad USB flash sticks or not.
You have to decide whether this storage device is to be bootable, or not.
Paul

Ive used SATA style SSDs and they are a lot faster than spinning rust.

Just how fast does a disk need to be?

[RobH]

Post by The Natural Philosopher

Post by Paul

Post by pinnerite
I have a Gigabyte miniATX motherboard with 4 SATA HDD sockets.
I wondered if I could replace the hard drive with an M.2 SSD
provided I could find some kind of adapter.
There appear to be loads of devices advertised but I cannot be sure
that they would fulfill my need.
Has anyone tried this?
TIA
Alan

Presumably there is a reason for this adventure ?
Was the hard drive being naughty ?
Just a plain old SATAIII SSD 2.5" drive (like you might
use in a laptop), can run at a SATA III rate. Because you
didn't name the motherboard model number, we can't guess
what controller is in there. Nor for that matter, how
spiffy your PCIe slots are. Your motherboard could be a
9.6" x 9.6" microATX (full size ATX is 12" high).
$ inxi -F
   Type: Desktop Mobo: Micro-Star model: MPG B550 GAMING PLUS
(MS-7C56) v: 1.0
     v: 1.I0  date: 07/13/2024
   Info: 8-core model: AMD Ryzen 7 5700G  bits: 64  type: MT MCP
cache: L2: 4 MiB
   ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Samsung model: SSD 870 EVO 4TB size: 3.64
TiB   <=== boot drive
When it comes to measuring them, computers are particularly clever.
For example, this machine has invariant RDTSC and yet speed measurement
of disks does not agree when performed by two different OSes.
This is captured on a Zen3 B550 system (Asmedia Southbridge).
    [Picture]  Comparison of benchmarks of SATA SSDs on LM213 and Windows
     https://i.postimg.cc/nrkVdbVn/munchkin-racing.gif
The only thing I have against NVMe, is the installation is a
bit fiddly, the screw is a nuisance. I own just one sample NVMe
and most of the time, it sits in the little cardboard box.
It would be nice, if they used good flash in SSDs, but that's never going
to happen. SLC, MLC, (TLC,QLC,PLC) the downward descent continues.
Bog roll for the win.
You can see in the bench picture, the drive at the bottom was
bought as an "experiment in cheapness". And the error corrector
can only manage about 285 MB/sec or so. The sectors aren't being
spared out, and while re-writing them might be fun, it might not
achieve the desired result. I wanted to see if the cheap drive
behaved like my bad USB flash sticks or not.
You have to decide whether this storage device is to be bootable, or not.
    Paul

Ive used SATA style SSDs and they are a lot faster than spinning rust.
Just how fast does a disk need to be?

that's what I use, 1 for the boot disk and the other for data etc

[Paul]

Post by The Natural Philosopher
Ive used SATA style SSDs and they are a lot faster than spinning rust.
Just how fast does a disk need to be?

According to the NVMe industry, there are some imaginary
videographers working in a video editor with 8K RAW,
at 2GB/sec. (I was told in the past, that some video
editors "layer" and that figure would be multiplied
by the number of layers or so.) There is no mention of
what piece of equipment can eat that composition and do
something with it.

They used to make accelerator cards in the past, for video.
There was a guy who used to shoot video of the Amazon and such,
and he had a Matrox accelerator card in his PC. But today, I
think general purpose GPUs have taken a good bite out
of that market.

Someone doing that work, is going to be using a RAID card,
just to host a generous storage space for their edits. Even
if the computer itself cannot keep up.

Paul

[Marco Moock]

Post by pinnerite
I have a Gigabyte miniATX motherboard with 4 SATA HDD sockets.
I wondered if I could replace the hard drive with an M.2 SSD
provided I could find some kind of adapter.

M.2 supports different standards. The question is if that SSD uses the
NVME or SATA protocol. For the further, you need a PCIe adapter to
connect it.